Star Trek: The Epic of Robert Wise
by Charles Andresen-Reed
Summary: The epic story of one man who goes from spending his twilight years amongst the stars to becoming one of the most powerful men in the known universes. Takes place in the Star Trek universe from 2096 on, covering multiple series/crews.
1. Chapter 1

_Three light-years out from Earth, on the J-Type Freighter "Olympus", early 2096_

Spacer Third Class Robert Wise was feeling just a _bit_ too old for his job. In point of fact, he was a good fifty years older than almost everyone else on the ship, probably one of the only octogenarians (at least, the only _human_ of that advanced of an age) in space. There were many days when he questioned his own sanity at his particular choice of career—most of his friends were comfortably retired, resting in lovely little communities on Earth and maybe playing some shuffleboard on occasion. They certainly weren't opening up entirely new chapters to their life, setting off to the stars like some starry-eyed teenager. At present, he wondered if retirement wouldn't have been a wiser decision.

"Report, Spacer!" the first officer, Mike Chambers, ordered.

"Yes, sir," Robert responded in a voice weakened only minutely by his age. "Polarized hull plating is maintaining seventy percent integrity. It will fail though if we don't haul our asses out of this…whatever it is…soon. I can't give you an exact estimate of time since the radiation intensity is varying immensely, but I'd say five or six minutes at most."

Robert's hands flew over his console, trying to coax a little more information out of the failing main sensor array. No matter what he tried, he couldn't seem to get anything useful out of the computer.

"Why didn't the sensors spot this phenomenon in the first place?" Jill Branson asked from her place in the captain's chair in the center of the bridge. "And just how the hell did it pull us out of warp?"

"Unknown," Robert responded. "I can only guess that this energy cloud's electromagnetic interference pulled us out of warp. Zefram Cochrane built the chambers for our warp core himself, and we haven't even been pushing the speed specifications for a J-Type… I seriously doubt if this was just some mechanical glitch."

Such a thing certainly would have been possible back in Robert's heyday of course, back in the early 21st Century. Back then immoral corporations were close to ruling the world, and the planet was spiraling towards the disaster that would be WWIII, a particularly bloody chapter of human history that Robert himself had fought in. It was his extensive experience on early space-capable fighter craft and impulse warships from that war that had enabled him to join the Western Coalition Merchant Marine, despite his advanced age. Unlike back during the war when planes would fall from the sky due to shoddy and rushed construction, there was little chance a modern vessel would possess much if any in the way of technical problems. Ever since Zefram Cochrane had brought warp travel to humanity, Earth had rushed headlong into a nearly utopic state. The new governments on Earth were few, nearly immune from corruption, and had steadily solved a great many of the problems that had plagued Earth for generations. There was even talk of forming a "United Earth" government, something that would have been inconceivable even a generation ago. The new Western Coalition was fanatical about safety and reliability aboard space vessels, and the J-Type freighter '_Olympus_' was no exception to their standards.

Captain Branson stood and approached Robert's console, staring towards the display intensely.

"Just what the hell is this thing anyway?" she asked him, staring the rapidly fluctuating energy readings.

Robert shook his head with frustration. "Other than that it is a cloud of energy of some sort, I really couldn't tell you, Captain. I can definitely say it wasn't on our sensor screen even three minutes ago; the log confirms this. I checked just to make sure I wasn't growing inattentive with age."

Captain Branson smiled wryly. "Robert, me and you both know that you have ten times the experience and capabilities of any other crewman on this vessel, and you are still able to keep up with the rest of us… including scoring damn nearly perfectly on your physical evaluation… and I have no lack of confidence in your skills. That's why I accepted your request to serve on this vessel. I'm hoping you can use that well-seasoned brain-"

"Ouch," Robert commented with a smirk.

"—experienced if you prefer then, but I'm hoping you can use it to conjure up a way out of this mess for us. We have no thrusters, no impulse engines, no warp engines, our hull will buckle inside of five minutes, and main power will fail even before then. What can we do?"

Robert shook his head slowly. "There's not a lot we can do. With the consistency of the energy drain, our escape pods would never be able to escape this phenomenon before becoming disabled. Since our reaction control thrusters are offline and we have no form of propulsion available…"

"What is it?" Captain Branson prompted urgently as she saw the look of hope in his eyes.

"We jettison the cargo using emergency explosive detachment procedures," Robert stated forcefully, punching numbers into the computer to calculate thrust variables even as he continued to verbalize his plan, "and then open the aft-facing exterior supply bays to space. The release of oxygen and the force from the cargo decoupling combined will generate enough thrust that we'll clear the central part of this cloud within three minutes. We'll be cutting it incredibly close, but it's a shot."

"Do it!" Branson ordered as she took her seat, and both Robert and First Office Chambers began tapping rapidly at separate parts of Robert's console. Three seconds later, the ship shuttered and everybody grabbed to the nearest handrails—the _Olympus_ was low enough on power that the inertial dampers were nearly completely offline—as the ship suddenly plunged forward through a swirling cloud filled with pockets of intense radiation.

"Two minutes forty-eight seconds until we clear the most intense section of the cloud," the helm officer shouted from her post over the sounds of the acceleration and emergency alarms.

"Three minutes fifty seconds until main power failure!" Robert informed the bridge.

"Transfer auxiliary batteries to the structural integrity system!" Chambers commanded.

Robert attempted to do so, keying up a series of switches that would dump power from the auxiliary banks into the fields of energy responsible for reinforcing the hull. His computer warbled back at him in a distressed tone.

"Power shunts offline," Robert reported, "unable to access auxiliary circuits. Estimated three minutes thirty-five seconds now until hull failure; there is a considerable margin of error there though as the peak energy intensity levels are all over the board!"

"Ma'am!" an engineer exclaimed from a rear-facing console at the back of the bridge. "I don't know what just happened, but some sort of energy build up suddenly disabled the hull polarization on our ventral side."

"Evacuate the crew to the upper decks!" Captain Branson ordered. "What's the status of the ventral hull; has any of the energy burned through?"

"Negative," the engineer replied, "but radiation is now flooding those decks. Lethal radiation doses registered in some of the most exposed sections. I'm isolating the environmental controls for that section and containing the radiation; we won't be able to help the crew who have already been exposed, but we might be able to keep the radiation from spreading throughout the ship."

The ship shuddered and pitched as the flow of the energy around them changed suddenly, and two of the seven bridge crew fell to the ground, a young man from Argentina whom Robert had only been recently getting to know taking a blow to the head from the side of a console on his way down. From the amount of blood he could see Robert would have to guess he would not be getting to know the young man any further.

"Jesus," Captain Branson uttered in a half-disbelieving tone as she gripped the sides of her chair with white knuckles. "Dr. Royce to the bridge!"

The engineer at the back of the room shook his head, punching at buttons on his console furiously.

"Captain," he stated, "internal communications links are down. Internal sensors are detecting radiation in additional sections of the ship, and of the original twenty people we had on board, sensors are only detecting fifteen remaining lifesigns. "

"How long?" Branson asked her helm officer in a coarse, breaking voice.

"One minute twenty seconds until we've cleared the worst of it!" the helm office reported.

"Can we make it that long?" Branson asked, looking directly at Robert.

He shook his head slowly towards her.

"Captain," he stated, his voice fighting the cacophony of alarms sounding in the background. "Our hull polarization is failing across the ship. Radiation is pouring in, and we have maybe two minutes of power left. Even if we break completely free of this—whatever the hell it is—our life support systems will only be able to support all of us for a few hours at most, even if we restore auxiliary power. I checked the status of the dilithium chamber, and the computer reports complete decrystallization. There are no known vessels within a month of us, and even if we could launch our escape pods there'd be nowhere for them to go."

Captain Branson placed her head in her hands and closed her eyes. The ship bucked a few more times and sparks flew from a console not two meters from her. She did not as much as flinch.

"There's got to be something…" she muttered. "Something… some way…"

"Deck two hull breach!" Chambers announced as all kinds of lights went red on a diagnostic board next to him. "Containment doors coming down. We've lost thirteen percent of our overall atmospheric reserves. Six casualties by computer estimates."

There were now only nine people remaining alive on the vessel according to the computer; six on the bridge, three in the engineering bay.

"Everyone follow me to medical!" Captain Branson commanded loudly. "We can use the cryotubes!"

"Ma'am!" Chambers objected, his eyes wide. "Those are for medical emergencies… just for keeping people in stasis until we reach Alpha Centauri in case there are casualties. We only have four, how are they possibly going to help?"

"Just do it!" Branson commanded, heading off the bridge and down the corridor. Some of her bridge crew took a second or two, but all of them followed.

As they rounded the next corridor, all of the lights went out and the ship went absolutely silent. It took several seconds, but emergency lights snapped on and the crew was able to continue towards the medical bay.

"Everybody in," Captain Branson ordered, pointing towards the entrance of the small two interior rooms that made up the medical bay. "I'm going to go get the remaining crew."

Branson turned around to head down a different corridor, but before she could make it even a few steps a piercing sound filled the hallway.

"Hull breach!" one of the bridge crew hollered, panicking and turning to run in the direction that flashing lights were now indicating, but tripping over a small gap between two sections of gravity plating. Robert dodged into the medical bay, knowing that it was isolated from the environmental controls of the rest of the ship, and Chambers followed him in. Another crewman tried to join them, but the computer slammed the door shut as the hull breach became catastrophic. Part of the crewman's foot made it into the medical bay, but the rest of him did not.

Robert sat on a nearby chair, steadying his breathing. If not for the fact that his heart was a genetically engineered replacement, replaced back during the war before genetic experimentation had become illegal, he might have had a heart attack.

"We have to make sure the Captain is okay," Chambers muttered, looking around in disbelief. The medical bay was completely isolated, with no windows, and the only entrance was no sealed. It also had its own internal low-yield auxiliary generator, designed to keep the medical systems functioning no matter what. Inside of the pristine and orderly medical bay it was difficult to believe that the entire ship was falling apart.

Robert lifted himself out of his chair, and headed to a nearby console. He tapped a few controls and brought up a full report from internal sensors and damage control systems.

He turned to Chambers and sighed.

"Sir…Mike," Robert said, his voice heavy, "over forty percent of the ship is exposed to space. We've cleared the worst of the radiation, but most of the ship is flooded, and main power is gone. The main computer is failing and probably won't stay on much longer. Also… we are the only lifesigns registering on this ship."

"What do we do?" The first officer's voice sounded broken, confused, and lost.

"Captain Branson was bringing us here for a good reason," Robert stated, looking at the cryotubes built into the wall of the medical bay. "The _Olympus_ has no dedicated medical staff and little in the way of serious medical support- no surgery capabilities, no advanced diagnostic equipment. Instead we have four of the latest in cryostasis chambers. They require little power, have their own internal power back-ups and are linked to an auxiliary generator, and each chamber is controlled by independent built-in computer systems. Since they weren't powered on when we hit the anomaly, it is likely they were largely unaffected by the radiation. We can program the medical bay to transfer all power to the tubes and have the ship keep us in stasis until a search and rescue arrives. It's the best chance we've got—in stasis we require very little in the way of resources and energy. As it is we have only basic emergency rations in this room. We could last a week, maybe two… and no ships could make it here in time, assuming they even start looking for us immediately. In the tubes we could last months, even possibly years if took that long."

Mike Chambers argued with him, tried to come up with alternatives. In the end, there just wasn't another option. They programmed the tubes, rerouted power from the medical bay and pulled themselves into the tubes.

It was only as the sequence was beginning and he was having just a few last thoughts before being rendered unconscious that Robert let himself realize the truth. They were in the middle of open space, had no power signature, and while their route was known it was almost five light-years long and search parties wouldn't be able to arrive for months, if that. Even then it would be like trying to find a specific rock in the Grand Canyon.

He was going to die in space.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

_On the Earth to Alpha Centauri Route, U.S.S. Carolina, 2163_

"Captain's Log, supplemental, United Earth… um, Federation Starship Carolina. We are continuing to survey the area around the P1040 anomaly, better known to the travelers of the Earth-Alpha Centauri space route by the rather theatrical name of the 'Doom Cloud'; this anomaly is suspected of having destroyed at least three freighters before ships were equipped with subspace sensors capable of detecting it in enough time to avoid breaching the anomaly. We have now reached the outer limits of this energy cloud—which we have discovered to be focused around a tear in subspace—and are continuing to survey outwards with our new sensors to see if we can detect any other variations in the subspace domain locally."

Captain Chapman thumbed a control on his chair's control panel, closing out his log. He rolled his eyes and sighed mildly.

"Anyone else almost wish we were still fighting the Romulans?" he asked wistfully.

His science officer, Martha Cooper, shook her head.

"We're not a warship anymore, remember?" she asked her captain, a slight hint of amusement in her voice. "No more battles, no more lobbing fusion torpedoes back and forth, no more disruptors tearing apart our shield grid. Kind of a relief, really."

"No more excitement," Chapman said, sighing once again. "The Daedalus class vessels were made to be warships, pure and simple. We can go toe to toe with any three or four Romulan warships. Our shields are stronger than a Klingon Bird of Prey's, our torpedoes hit harder even than the Andorian Mark IV's, and our phased laser cannons pack ten-fold more power than the old NX –class ships. And what are we doing now? Conducting scientific surveys."

"In this case it's fairly important work," Ensign Cooper reminded him. "The Federation has very little information on subspace anomalies. While something like this doesn't pose much of a threat to us—our shields can certainly handle a little stray electromagnetic discharge here and there after all—there are still many freighters and scout ships we have in operation that could potentially fall victim to something like this."

Captain Chapman sighed once again, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand in an attempt to stave off a tension headache.

"Is this what working for the Federation is going to be?" he asked, not necessarily to anyone in particular. "Wandering around, doing charting and scientific analysis, that sort of thing? Not exactly what all of us originally signed up for."

"You did accept a commission in the Federation's Starfleet," the executive officer, Vladimir Alexandrov reminded him. "We were all given the choice of whether or not to transfer our service when the United Earth government donated our vessels to the Federation."

"Oh yes, what a choice," Chapman grouched, "stay in the U.E. Starfleet, which currently has a whole ten outdated ships left to it, or join the new Federation Starfleet, which is composed of almost the entirety of the former U.E. navy, in addition to a couple of Vulcan scout ships, a few Andorian warships, and basically is going to be carrying out all deep space exploration and defense from this point forward. I get it, Commander, I really do… I even think this Federation thing is a good idea, when it comes right down to it. Still, it would be nice to be doing something a little less mundane."

"We're coming to the checkpoint for this leg of the mission," a young crewman from the navigation console informed the captain. "Shall I set a course for distance sampling?"

Captain Chapman nodded, rising from his command chair and approaching the navigation console, as much to keep himself awake as to check on the work of the crewman.

"Take us out one billion kilometers, complete a scan cycle, then four billion, eight billion, and sixteen billion kilometers," Chapman commanded the crewman, also making sure the helm officer was noting his directions. "That should be more than thorough enough according to our mission parameters. See if you can get the engines to Warp 4 between those legs—I know that gives us limited time for acceleration and deceleration at those kind of distances, but it will be a good test of the new dynamic anti-matter injection systems and whether we'll be capable of the kind of in-system jumps that the engineers claim we can handle."

"Aye sir," said both the navigation and helm crewmen simultaneously, the helmsman with a bit of a smile. It wasn't often that they were allowed to test the limits of the engines.

"Engage," Chapman ordered, gesturing briefly towards the viewscreen.

The Carolina slid into warp without so much as an inkling of motion felt by the crew, but there was a perceptible thrum conducted through the floor as enormous energies were created by the matter/anti-mater reactor.

The Carolina came out of warp only briefly to complete a new series of scans, and then lunged back into the subspace domain.

"All results typical outside of the cloud barrier," Ensign Cooper announced. "Honestly, it's no wonder that freighters have been destroyed by this before—outside of the confines of the actual cloud, there's not so much as a trace of its influence or presence."

Captain Chapman nodded as if he was paying attention, but really he was examining a readout on his chair's display of the power curves as they jumped into and out of warp. He was pleased to see that the Carolina was performing exactly to specification and was not struggling whatsoever with the sharp accelerations and decelerations. The inertial dampers were working a little harder than they typically had to, but there was no perceptible delay as they adjusted power—if there had been, the crew certainly would have felt it quickly enough.

After a few more cycles of scanning and warping, Ensign Cooper turned towards the captain with a smirk on her face.

"Scientific survey completed, Captain," she informed him. "We can proceed to Starbase 2 per mission orders and receive our next assignment there. See, that wasn't so bad, was it? Didn't even take a full day to complete the—"

An automated alert signal from her computer caused Ensign Cooper to whirl around, her brow knitting together as she examined her display.

"Sir, very faint but clearly not natural power signal detected," Cooper announced. "It's within a metallic mass of some sort—too big to be a probe, but way too weak of a power source to be a vessel. Not receiving any standard friend or foe identifier. It is at the extreme edge of our range; about five hundred thousand kilometers back towards the cloud."

"Transmit standard greeting in all known languages," Captain Chapman ordered as he tugged his uniform into place while standing and walking over to lean against the bulkhead next to the science console. "And Cooper, see if you can get a higher resolution scan. Helm, approach the contact at one-quarter impulse."

"Aye, sir," registered from several corners of the bridge.

"No response to our greetings; I transmitted in the clear, sweeping all known languages as well as lingua-code sir," Shranka, a light-blue skinned Andorian at the communications console informed him.

Ensign Cooper tapped a few controls on her console, focusing in a few sensors.

"Compiling a visual profile sir," Cooper reported, her flingers still flying across the controls in order to clear up the image. "If I had to guess, this looks like the forward tug-section of a J-Type Freighter… pretty damaged though, just look at how mottled that hull looks. The level of power I'm reading from it wouldn't even be enough to maintain basic life support."

"A J-Type freighter?" Captain Chapman asked, his left eyebrow raised slightly. "I haven't heard of any reports of a mayday call or loss of contact with any J-Type… in fact, J-Types shouldn't even be along this course. Most of them haven't been refit in twenty or thirty years, if that… they don't have shields, only minimal hull plating… they are supposed to stay well clear of the P1040 anomaly. Most of their navigation computers are programmed to give a warning if they even get within fifteen billion kilometers of the thing."

"The thing is Captain," Cooper noted as her eyes widened slightly as they approached the vessel and she was able to get clearer images of the hull. "That warning is only programmed in because of this vessel and the two that followed her into destruction... the hull markings on the side of the freighter indicate that it is the E.C.S. Olympus. That was the first ship ever lost to the P1040 anomaly, over sixty years ago."

Chapman shook his head in wonder, examining the image as it became clearer on Cooper's display.

"I can't believe it," he muttered. "A sixty year old wreck. It's still moving at a decent speed too… they must have attempted to clear the cloud and it's been drifting on that momentum for three generations since. How in the world does it even still have a power source operating? Ensign, bring up the specs."

Cooper tapped a couple of controls and then inserted a magnetic tape from a drawer beneath her console into the reader next to her console. While a ship's computer could hold massive amounts of data, during the Earth-Romulan war it had been decided that much of a ship's critical information would be held in library tapes that were easily destructible in the event of capture, and these tapes were highly encrypted. The practice had saved terabytes worth of classified information from falling into Romulan hands.

"J-Class freighter, United Earth early model, 2096-2102 commissions only," a flat electronic voice read out from the console. "Mass of 855,000 metric tons inclusive of cargo modules, 98,000 metric tons without cargo containers attached. Monotanium single hull, light polarized armor, class two structural integrity field, five year duty before resupply capacity, maximum rated speed of Warp Two, armament consists of twin plasma cannons in the one to two Terawatt range, between fifteen to twenty crew mission-specific, currently—"

"Halt readout," Captain Chapman ordered, rolling his eyes. "Specific inquiry: we are detecting a low-yield power source from within an early J-Class freighter. Evidence suggests both main power and auxiliary power are offline. Explanation?"

"The medical bay of a J-Class was designed for long-term storage and transport of injured crewman to the next available port of call," the electronic voice responded. "Possibility: medical cryogenic generator is active. All medical bay systems including the computer and power supply are insular and isolated only to the medical bay. It is possible for these systems to remain functioning even after main and auxiliary power failure."

Captain Chapman made his way over to his chair and sat down heavily, looking slightly shocked.

"Cryogenics?" he commented aloud. "We haven't equipped a ship with cryogenic tubes in fifty or more years. Is there a chance someone could still be alive over there?"

"Very unlikely," Commander Alexandrov voiced with more than a hint of skepticism. "We stopped using those damn things because they had a miserable rate of success compared to equipping a ship with a good doctor. Of all the crew who had to be put in one for a year or longer, maybe eighty percent came out alive. The chances of success with revival go down with each and every year that passes; these aren't sleeper ships like some old DY-100, Captain. They just aren't designed to hold people for that long. What are the chances anyone could survive in one of those things for six and a half decades?"

"Not very good," Ensign Cooper confirmed from her science station. "I actually don't think we have a record of anyone being successfully revived after anything more than a twelve year cryogenic freeze. Of course, we also have never even run across any of the old DY-class sleepers, but we're not talking about a dedicated sleeper ship here, as the X.O. mentioned."

"Still," Captain Chapman said with a restrained sigh as some of his enthusiasm died down, "we have to at least make an investigation. Is the medical bay still sealed?"

Ensign Cooper checked her screen, looking into a goggle-like sensor display.

"Still sealed and it even contains oxygen, but no life support systems actually remain active in the bay itself," Cooper reported. "We can beam in but we'll need full environmental suits equipped with gravity boots."

"Commander—"

"Already on it," Commander Alexandrov reported, gesturing towards Cooper. "You're with me, we'll make this minimal since we're talking about a confined space."

Cooper and Alexandrov made their way to the turbolift and were standing in the transport room gearing up within five minutes.

"Come on, you have to be at least a little bit excited," Cooper asked as she grabbed her somewhat bubble-like helmet and began securing it to her suit. She glanced down at a communications icon on the interior of the suit and it lit up after a moment of tracking her eyes, activating the suit to suit communications system.

"Investigating a ghost ship is not precisely my idea of a good time," Commander Alexandrov said after activating his own communications link. They could hear each other somewhat faintly through the room, and after a very slight lag through the internal speakers. "Seems like bad luck to me."

Ensign Cooper snorted with more than a bit of derision, but did not comment as she stepped on to the transport pad.

"Two to beam over," Alexandrov ordered as he stepped beside her on the two-person pad.

Alexandrov closed his eyes during the transport, as it made him feel strange enough to be turned into energy and then back to matter without also being able to see the process.

When he opened his eyes, he was clearly in an old medical bay, still in good shape but completely dark other than the automatic lights that had kicked on from both of the environmental suits' chest plates.

He tapped the control on his wrist to activate his wrist-mounted light, and Ensign Cooper did the same. They both scanned around with the lights until they simultaneously spotted the only interesting thing in the room: a bank of four trays set into a titanium wall, all with solid doors large enough to accommodate a human lying flat behind them. The cryotubes.

Ensign Cooper stepped up to them eagerly, only barely restrained by the jerky motion inherent to gravity boots.

"Two of the four are online and still running," Ensign Cooper reported as she glanced over a set of eight small indicators, all of which were just blinking or solid LEDs. "No way to check on condition from out here. Permission to slide out the trays sir? They are still fully contained until you open the top of the chambers."

"Go ahead," Alexandrov ordered, after only hesitating momentarily. "But prepare yourself. You know what you are likely to see."

Cooper nodded and then without any further comment toggled a physical switch on the top of the cryotubes. She stepped out of its way as it slowly slid from the wall.

"Damn," she muttered. The individual within was not decomposed or anything so bad looking as she would have feared, but his skin was the palest white she had ever seen and his chest had partially collapsed. She pulled her tricorder from her side to confirm, pointing the bulky device towards the tube.

"Dead," she reported, sounding slightly dejected. "I'd say it failed fifty, maybe fifty-five years ago… at least partially. It worked well enough to stop decomposition, but not to continue suspending all vital life processes and replacing necessary biological functions. I'll attach a transporter tag to the outside of his cryotube and have Chief Timms beam him directly into the morgue."

She took a small wafer off her utility belt and placed it on the surface of the tube.

"Chief Timms," Alexandrov ordered as he watched her finish attaching the wafer, "lock on to the active transport tag and beam the body out of that tube and directly into the morgue."

"Aye, sir," a deep voice stated over the speakers of both of their suits, and the body coalesced into energy and then disappeared.

"Well," Cooper said with a sigh as she walked over to the other active tube and toggled the switch on that one, "let's see what we have here."

The tube slid slowly out of the wall, but this time the person inside did not look the least bit unhealthy. He looked to be a fifty year old male, about six foot two, maybe one hundred ninety pounds of most of it wiry muscle. His skin had a slightly pale but overall health tone, and both his full head of hair and his thick beard were still black though with some flecks of silver running through; if the tube had failed significantly, at minimum his faster biological processes such as hair growth and decay would have been evidence of such.

"My god," Alexandrov commented as he stared at the man. "Is he actually still alive?"

Cooper checked her tricorder as she brought it to bear on the tube.

"According to these readings, yes," she responded a bit breathlessly. "His heart rate is extremely low as it is supposed to be, and frankly I don't even know how he is still alive—this tube isn't functioning _that_ much better than the other one. I see signs of extensive modification to some of his musculature, internal organs, and even his skin. Some version of genetic therapy I would have to presume."

"Are we talking Augment-style modifications here?" Alexandrov asked sharply, a slight sheen of sweat now visible on his brow under the glare of the suit lights.

"No, not someone from the Eugenics War and not an Augment," Cooper said, shaking her head slightly. "The modifications aren't on one hundred percent of the body, and weren't done before birth. The modifications remind me of an article I was reading about illegal genetic tampering done during the third World War, when the Western Coalition—"

Cooper cut herself off as several lights flashed near the tube, and her tricorder registered a change at the same time.

"Sir!" she exclaimed, looking at the readout. "The tube is trying to revive him! With the loss of integrity in the life support systems in this tube, there's no way it will succeed. We need to beam him out of there, now! He's already going into shock so we need to beam him directly to sickbay."

"Chief Timms!" Alexandrov said loudly, not even taking the time to remind Cooper that directly transporting someone to sickbay was a fairly dangerous procedure as the transporters were just not designed for site to site transportation, "you heard the lady! Lock on the faint lifesigns immediately in front of us and then beam him directly into the sickbay! Then bring us back on over as well… alert Doctor Carter, medical emergency!"


End file.
